20200731.0430

Not everything fades as the waters recede
The smells strengthen of
Muck and mire, frog and snake and turtle
Fish almost out of water and all their ordure
Not the best breeze to feel while
Driving across the bridge
That should not be there

20200730.0430

The spring-fed creeks begin to run dry
The naked stone of their beds bared to the
Blue skies so bright they shimmer
Stainless steel pan scoured bare and left on the burner too long
With no liquid to simmer in it

20200729.0430

She does not spurn the gifts I mean to give
Not exactly
Though she does not make much of them
And I am hurt by it
Though I ask myself
Did she attend more closely
Would she reject the more vehemently
What she now accepts without much comment?
Silence is better than some words

20200728.0430

Why do I work to get words on the page,
Reveal to readers, too rare for comfort,
The midst of the mind claimed as my own,
Word-hoard unworthy, wonderless ever,
Full, yes, of folly and fable unheeded?
Better to breathe the bad air than none.

20200727.0430

All the while I sit and peck away
Crow-like, seeking after corn
Or tasty bloody gobbets before they blacken with rot under Arien's charge
I could be doing other things of greater profit
Meeting more the measure of a man in my part of the world
Where money means so much
But while my head is down
I do not see the opportunity
Cat ready to pounce upon me

20200726.0430

There is something to be said for
Sitting quietly in the shade
Windows down and engine off
Hearing horn-blasts and engines pushed
Harder than is wise for no good reason
I know they'll be off the road before
I get back on again

20200725.0430

The hardest lesson
And one that I still struggle to learn
Is that I am not special
And it is not because I got
Participation trophies
But because I used to excel
And do not now

20200724.0430

The Muses
When they speak to me
Do so in disjointed voices
Not as a harmonious choir
Or even trading fours or eights
Riffing in sequence in a common chord progression
And my ears have never been the best

20200723.0430

Somewhere in the pages I have penned
A perfect poem awaits
But I am inept and cannot find it

20200722.0430

The air inside grows stuffy
Filled with the smell of my own exhalation
Memories of a miasma which I did not perceive until
I breathed it in and out and in again
And I shudder at the stink of it
Parts of myself I had thought cast out only
To be taken in again
Uncelebrated prodigal children
Given no inheritance
But still better breathing than
What I must otherwise inhale

20200721.0430

I have erred many times
Unwittingly in the moment
Indelibly in the ink
Do I blot the words and stain the page yet more
Or tear it from its binding
Or leave it in place with an
Apology
Tendered
An example of the ease of failure
Reminder of vigilance still needed?

20200720.0430

I must remind myself
Sometimes
The exhalation onto the page
Does not satisfy the lungs
I do not breathe deeply enough

20200719.0430

The longer run remains the
More demanding task, but
It is the shorter sprints that
Remain in memory

20200718.0430

If it is the case that
The poem says best that
Says most with least
Then
No
Must be better verse than
Yes
And that is not a comfort

20200717.0430

Some have said
A poem succeeds in what is left unsaid
A hole by what has been removed
And what can be hidden in
Remaining emptiness
But what shovel fits best to such digging
And what is laid bare from its use?

20200716.0430

I am no Hercules
But that is for the best
For it is not twelve tasks that face me

20200715.0430

However skilled with words I may be
Or may well not be
As the case may be
I will never really get them right
Set them such that they could not be better
Or keep meaning what I thought I meant them to mean
And I am not the only one for whom it is true

20200714.0430

I have never known which bird I have been hearing
Some silly song-thing flittering by
Or an owl, an omen I never thought to heed

20200713.0430

The molten gold pours out over the trees
Burning their leaves brown again
And chasing from my flesh the fluids it needs
That I someday will not be able to replace

20200712.0430

The others' mothers look askance at me
Wondering which of their daughters I'm leering at
As I look out across the mats and smile
And even the fact that my girl, my world
Runs up to me again and again for
A hug and a kiss and a word of encouragement
Where everyone can see it does not help
Them not to think that I am waiting for their inattention
And doing so with bad intentions
And I find I cannot blame them

20200711.0430

Oh, thank heaven
The joke remains in mind
Today of all days
Decipher it who will!

20200710.0430

Everything you do speaks of you
The choice of every word
Every phrase
Says more than itself
It says you are the kind of person
Who uses that word
Instead of another
Who favors that phrasing
That cadence
That rhythm
And even if you do not care
The fact that you say such a thing
(And it is not true
Because if you did not care
You would not say
The act itself demanding caring
To perform
Even if not much)
Says that you
Can afford not to care
And that is not a wealth that all share

20200709.0430

The force of Helian ire is felt
Even as that charioteer moves away from this place
Racing circuits that each grow further off than the last
And it needs not Icarus to fly so high as to melt
As those who stand upon these stones
Even in the shade of oak and cedar and mesquite
Well know

20200708.0430

It is not surgery, delicate and precise as it may need to be
Trimming away the unwanted bits and bringing together things
That had not been joined before but do better now that they are
And it is not the construction of devices
Small and strange and wonderful
Even if tiny bits are arranged together in ways that
Proceed in part from design and in part from sudden inspiration that
Emerges without warning
It benefits from no such sterility as either of them
No speck of dust of sudden splatter will corrupt the whole
Even if it might make the medium more unwieldy for a time
And it endures longer
While the subjects of surgery crumble in the grave
And the devices built burn away or rot in landfills
Taken up again and again and again
Or so it is always to be hoped

20200707.0430

Why is it so hard to understand
That you are not alone in this still-young land--
Of which much was built by stolen hand
That was forced into labor by whips' cruel demand--
That, horn-handed or no, you march in a band,
Even when cadence is called by command
Of Stupid God's worker who follows no strand
Of music that is not written as in sand,
That a drum-beat is sounding and you can remand
Your braying and bleating, thus better suzerain'd,
To it, and thus make better music?

20200706.0430

Once
I thought I could tend a garden
Feed it from my compost pile so that it would
Produce what others could take in and
Put to use. But now, I have
Tended too long a pile unused, and
Storms have washed the nutrients away, and
Fungus grows within it that cannot be
Eaten more than
Once

20200705.0430

The fertile compost between my ears admits many worms
And while each of them sings a jaunty tune
No two have hit upon the same song
And finding a single melody to follow amid the tumult
Would take a bigger shovel than I have ready to hand

20200704.0430

The fireworks may still go off
With fewer there to see them,
And cookouts still the backyards fill
With fewer to glee in them,
And grumblings about the lacks
Will doubtless proceed from them
As, in this year, the pushed-off fear
May well soon have undone them.

20200703.0430

Avert, again, your eyes from me,
O, Stupid God, and do not see
Where I go and what I do!
It is my only prayer to you,
That you never will me bless;
I do not need to feel that cess.

20200702.0430

Sometimes I think I should in worship fall
Towards which me the Stupid God does call
And join the throngs that lie within its thrall,
For I am not less angry than they are,
And they than me seem happier by far.
If I would join them, I would face no bar,
But would be celebrated for a time
As I became complicit in each crime
They do against good sense and the sublime--
Which they will claim to praise as they abjure
What they mistakenly believe impure,
And in those wrong beliefs, they are too sure.
But in such cause, I cannot take a knee.
Too many praise the Stupid God; not me.

20200701.0430

A number of years ago today--
And just how many, I'll not say--
She left the room where she first lay,
And I am glad she did,
For had she not come out from there,
I'd not have met her, come to care
For her as I intend to e'er--
And, no, I do not kid.

Happy birthday to my beloved wife!